Red tape slowing efforts to battle virus

Friday

May 24, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 24, 2013 at 11:01 AM

GENEVA - International efforts to combat a new pneumonialike virus that has killed 22 people are being slowed by unclear rules and competition for the potentially profitable rights to disease samples, the head of the World Health Organization warned yesterday.

GENEVA — International efforts to combat a new pneumonialike virus that has killed 22 people are being slowed by unclear rules and competition for the potentially profitable rights to disease samples, the head of the World Health Organization warned yesterday.

Dr. Margaret Chan, in a blunt warning to the U.N. agency’s annual global assembly, portrayed a previously little-known flap over who owns a sample of the virus as a global game-changer that could put people’s lives at risk.The virus, which first emerged in Saudi Arabia, is called MERS, for Middle East respiratory syndrome.

The controversy stems from a sample taken by Saudi microbiologist Ali Mohamed Zaki that he mailed last year to virologist Ron Fouchier at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands.

Fouchier tested, sequenced and identified it last September as a new virus. Then, his private medical center patented how it synthesized the germ and required other researchers who wanted samples to first sign an agreement that could trigger a payment.

Saudi Arabia said the patenting delayed development of diagnostic kits and blood tests. “There was a lag of three months where we were not aware of the discovery of the virus,” Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish told the Geneva assembly. He said the sample was sent to the Dutch lab without official permission.